By Marlaina Cockcroft
On day one, the teams learned about the fire-damaged town of Elmwood. On day two, they presented detailed proposals for redeveloping it. Not bad for a group of high school students.
The crash course in urban planning at Morris County School of Technology in Denville was courtesy of the Urban Land Institute Northern New Jersey, which debuted a shorter version of its nationwide UrbanPlan program over two days in December.
“One day they talk about the mechanics and the process of the tool … the next day they actually sit down and go through the development process,” said William Lashbrook, a ULI volunteer and retired commercial real estate banker with PNC.
Under the program, students respond to a “request for proposals” to redevelop a neighborhood in the fictional town of Elmwood. Each student on a team takes on a different role, such as finance director, neighborhood liaison or site planner, as they plan their proposals.
In Denville, students clustered at tables with laptops and shared screens, their Lego representations of Elmwood in front of them. Their slideshows explained their mission statement and site plan, detailing elements like jobs created, amount of open space, projected revenue, amount of affordable housing, environmental factors and input from community groups.
Lashbrook said students need to consider factors like what size grocery store to include or where to locate a homeless shelter. “There’s no right answer.”
Hearing the proposals were “Elmwood Mayor” Daniel Grant and the city council, as portrayed by ULI volunteers.
Grant, of ENV Architecture + Design and incoming co-chair of ULI NNJ, said the original version of UrbanPlan is led by teachers, who need time to familiarize themselves with the concepts. The shorter version is led by ULI volunteers.
“The real goal is to drive an alignment, really, between developers and city officials in real life and bring them together into an environment that is cornerstoned in education,” Grant said.
He said of the Denville students, “These students have a lot of extremely high levels of critical thinking. We are introducing something that I think is overlooked day to day, and I think now that they’re thinking about this, (it’s) changing the way they look at what’s around them.”
Other volunteers saw benefits to the shorter process. Pennoni’s Stephen Hoyt, for instance, cited the impact of giving students real-world feedback as they went through their decision-making process.
“We see the gears turn as they’re going through it,” said Hoyt, an associate vice president with the consulting engineering firm Pennoni.
Stephanie Turkot, also a member of the Denville Planning Board, said the shorter program required students to come up with a model more quickly. Her original goal in signing up was to learn more about the real estate realm, said Turkot, with Provectus Environmental, an environmental remediation firm. Now what she gets out of it is “the feeling of watching the youth and the ideas that they have and the way that they think of things.”
A real-life mayor stopped by as well. Before the students introduced their proposals, Denville Mayor Tom Andes spoke to them about how planners need to take everything into consideration — feedback from the lawyer, the engineer and the public.
“Everything we do in government is a balance,” Andes said. “I have to balance everything — the tax dollars and what the people want us to do with that.”
The student teams focused on different elements in their proposals, such as offering community services or retaining historic buildings. Several included a small business incubator. Ecofriendly infrastructure, net-zero plans and bike share programs were common features.
Afterward, “Mayor Grant” and his council asked the students questions: How will they accommodate small businesses? Will the skate park cause noise and injury issues? Is a park blocked by housing?
Grant and the council recessed to analyze the plans, then gave each team feedback before announcing the winning proposal.
Superintendent Dr. Anita Champagne, who was watching the proceedings, was already a fan of UrbanPlan. She’d seen the program in East Brunswick about four years ago and brought it to East Orange as the assistant superintendent. When she came to Morris County, she was determined to bring UrbanPlan along. It shows students how “to project-plan to take a problem and solve that problem,” she said.
Champagne said education in the future will focus more on applying skills to real-life scenarios, as UrbanPlan does with urban development and affordable housing. “The kids see these things happening. They see development happening all around them, and it allows them to understand that they can have an opinion about it and that they grow into a place where they can also have a voice about it.”
Principal Mark Menadier had spent time with the students laying the groundwork for the program. When instructor Bianca Cole sat down with them, Champagne said, “the light bulbs went off.”
Cole, an independent contractor with ULI and part of the Washington, D.C., chapter, said afterward that she’s been teaching UrbanPlan for several years in multiple states. This group exemplified a learning process of respect toward their peers, she said.
Every area is different, “but this plan is meant to be able to be situated in any environment.” That’s what makes it unique, she said.
The students on the winning team, Golden Growth Developments Inc., appreciated the experience. Aarvi Patel said, “I feel like at the start, all of us were really lost on where to go, but with the help of the mentors, I think we got a really great learning opportunity on stuff like how to build a real community and all the factors that go into it.”
Levi Salsberg said they went beyond the outlines of the project in their thinking. When they placed a store on a corner, for instance, they considered the traffic it would bring.
“I thought this whole thing was a very creative, innovative project,” Emir Unal said.
Marlaina Cockcroft is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.
